Thursday, November 06, 2008

Confusing?

Antonia Zerbisias notes: "How people can vote for the first African American president in American history, with all that implies, while simultaneously voting to discriminate against gays is testament to the incoherence of American politics and the lack of clear cutphilosophy guiding people's choices...."

She's correct that there's a lack of clear-cut philosophy at the heart of what she sees as the disconnect.

The right of people (of any and every gender...and number) to marry, free of government preference or censure, free of state interference, is based on an ultimately individualist position: the individual right to choose the structure of one's own consensual relationships.

Pretty much everything Barack Obama stands for, though, is antithetical to individualism. And so Obama's voters made a mistake individualists wouldn't make. That's not a surprise.

"I think it's mainly because of the way we were brought up in the church; we don't agree with it," said Jasmine Jones, 25, who is black. "I'm not really the type that I wanted to stop people's rights. But I still have my beliefs, and if I can vote my beliefs that's what I'm going to do.

What Ms. Jones actually means, of course, is "if I can vote to make others behave according to my beliefs, that's what I'm going to do".

"What the church does is give that perspective that this is a sacred issue as well as a social issue," said Derek McCoy, African American outreach director for the Protect Marriage Campaign. "The reason I feel they came out so strong on the issue is one, for them, it's not a civil rights issue, it's a marriage issue. It's about marriage being between a man and a woman and it doesn't cut into the civil rights issue, about equality.

I'm sure Mr. McCoy wouldn't have a problem if, say, his behaviour was to be affected by, say, a strict Muslim view, then. After all, to Mr. McCoy it's "a sacred issue as well as a social issue"; it's not at all about his right to choose his own consensual relationships.

Points:

"In your efforts to reduce government, aim for zero. If you ever get there and don't like what you see, I guarantee that it will be the easiest thing in the world to pick up the nearest telephone and have another one established on the very next day." Robert LeFevre (1970) quoted by Billy Beck

"Blaming the current financial crisis on the failure of markets is like blaming an airplane crash on the failure of gravity." Kyle Bennett

"Wars are seldom caused by spontaneous hatreds between peoples, for peoples in general are too ignorant of one another to have grievances and too indifferent to what goes on beyond their borders to plan conquests. They must be urged to slaughter by politicians who know how to alarm them." H.L. Mencken"The almost erotic pleasure of spending money that others have earned and saved is one reason people put up with the tiresome aspects of political life." - George Will

"We should all be thankful to the Soviets because they have proved conclusively that socialism doesn't work. No one can say they didn't have enough power or enough bureaucracy or enough planners or they didn't go far enough." Paul Craig Roberts

"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." H.L. Mencken.

"[F]or all he's really worth to Objectivism today, That Woman might as well never have devoted a single line to Ragnar Danneskjold" - Billy Beck

"25 States allow anyone to buy a gun, strap it on, and walk down the street with no permit of any kind: some say it's crazy. However, four out of five US murders are committed in the other half of the country: so who's crazy?" -- Andrew Ford

"Asking liberals where wages and prices come from is like asking six-year-olds where babies come from." Thomas Sowell

"People shouldn't be afraid of their governments, governments should be afraid of their people." V for Vendetta (Movie)

"That stone buddha deserves all the birdshit it gets. I wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind." Ikkyu

"I left Earth three times. I found no place else to go. Please take care of Spaceship Earth." Walter Schirra

"I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion; I’ve watched C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain. Time to die." Roy Batty - Blade Runner

"All social engineering is preceded by verbal engineering." Rita Marker

"Neither one person, nor any number of persons, is warranted in saying to another human creature of ripe years that he shall not do with his life for his own benefit what he chooses to do with it. All errors he is likely to commit against advice and warning are far outweighed by the evil of allowing others to constrain him to do what they deem his good." John Stuart Mill

"Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." from The Law - Frédéric Bastiat

"Well, you have to know. Or you can't sing it." Richard Dreyfuss (Mr. Holland's Opus)

When seconds count, the police are only minutes away. (who knows who said it first...but it's true).

We didn't leave the Stone Age because we ran out of stones" - Thomas Barnett

"Pete Best was a good drummer, but Ringo was a good Beatle." John Lennon"I guarantee that people will steal things in market anarchy. They just won't be able to credibly claim a public mandate to do so." Kyle Bennett

"For if power without law [meaning 'just the will of the prevailing dominant mob'] can make laws, may alter the fundamental laws of the kingdom, I do not know what subject he is in England that can be sure of his life, or any thing that he calls his own." Charles I (pdf)

"If more government control and less civil liberties mean increased safety, why aren’t our prisons the safest places in the country?" Munchkin WranglerThey're called missles, not hittles.Fire two. Unknown Pilot

Your third party vote is not wasted. It serves to enslave your mind just as well as a major party vote does. - Brad Spangler.

Remember, government jobs are *hard* and confusing; irrational decisions appearing to be insane are the case only because we can’t appreciate how immensely difficult redistributionist social relativism really is. - Hatless Hessian

Tradition holds that even the most senior officer will salute a Victoria Cross recipient as a mark of the utmost respect for their act of valour. - Angus Houston

The socialists are running out of other people's money.--Joe Gopher on the CBC comments

Though my heart may be left of center, I have always known that the only economic system that works is a market economy. This is the only natural economy, the only kind that makes sense, the only one that leads to prosperity, because it is the only one that reflects the nature of life itself. The essence of life is infinitely and mysteriously multiform, and therefore it cannot be contained or planned for, in its fullness and variability, by any central intelligence.--Vaclav HavelIf I have a right to be free at all, I have a right to be free right here where I am, and right now. So I'm staying. I arrived on this planet the exact same way everybody else did. - Me.

The difference between cow poop and chicken poop isn't that one of them isn't poop. - Me.

Whenever someone from the government asks you "where would you be without us" the first and most essential answer is "free". - Me.